About Me

Gerry Dantone is the founder and former coordinator for the Center for Inquiry - Long Island Community and founder & President of Long Island Secular Humanists. He edited the CFI-LI INQUIRER for 11 years and has contributed to Free Inquiry magazine. He has appeared on CNN, FoxNews and local TV and radio. In addition, Gerry Dantone is a singer-songwriter-music producer for his band UniversalDice.com. You may visit their websites, see below.

Friday, August 1, 2008

What issues currently interest stupid voters?Or more precisely, what issues do the various
campaigns believe interest or could interest stupid voters?

Here’s a recap of recent items:

1)Washington
Post, July 30, 2008:
Obama “Snubs” Troops: “For four days, Sen. John McCain
and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama
of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital
because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true…McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said
again yesterday that the Republican's version of events is correct, and that
Obama canceled the visit because he was not allowed to take reporters and
cameras into the hospital. "It is safe to say that, according to press
reports, Barack Obama avoided, skipped, canceled the visit because of those
reasons," he said. "We're not making a leap here." Asked repeatedly for the "reports,"
Bounds provided three examples, none of
which alleged that Obama had wanted to take members of the media to the
hospital.”(Go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/29/AR2008072902286.html?sid=ST2008072902360&pos=
.)

It has been documented that Obama has
often visited troops in the course of his European and Asian trip.In this case, since bringing the media was
never a consideration, cancellation could have nothing to due with the media’s
absence.It may have been a snafu of
some sort, but nothing to be insulted over.

It is guaranteed, of course, that the
complete lack of evidence is irrelevant to the McCain campaign or many stupid
voters.This is a big win for McCain in
the war for the stupid vote.

2)Part A:Joe Conason, Salon, July 25, 2008:The
Surge is “Working”:“The rebuttals
of McCain's embarrassing assertion that the Sunni insurgency's turn toward the U.S. and away
from al-Qaida came because of the surge have been ample and devastating.His badly skewed sense of time and events has
raised fresh doubts about his fitness for the presidency, since he was either
incapable of comprehending contemporary facts or intentionally misleading the
public when he told CBS anchor Katie
Couric (which was edited in a manner to make McCain seem less
ignorant) that the Anbar awakening "began" during the surge (and that
troop escalation enabled the U.S. to protect a Sunni sheik who was actually
assassinated during that period).

But aside
from that moment of untruth, there are deeper problems in all the airy
assertions about the triumph of the surge.

First there
is the matter of that shift by the Sunni insurgents, which had nothing to do with the escalation.What changed the minds of the Sunni rebels in
Anbar province and elsewhere was a revamped counterinsurgency doctrine that
emphasized careful bribery over indiscriminate reprisals -- and that seized
upon the growing alienation of the Sunnis from the bullying, murderous
leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq.The American military officers who oversaw
and implemented that strategy, including Gen. David Petraeus, deserve full
credit.Even Petraeus, a strong
supporter of the surge, makes very limited claims about its role in bolstering
the Sunni turn, however.

In fact, it was the prospect of an early U.S. withdrawal, not the surge that prompted the Sunni
insurgents to change sides, according to the American officers who worked with
their leaders.A fascinating article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs by
Georgetown professor Colin Kahl and retired Gen. William Odom quotes Marine
Maj. Gen. John Allen, who ran the tribal engagement operations in Anbar during
2007, saying that the Democratic sweep
in the 2006 midterm elections and the increasing demand for withdrawal by the
American public "did not go unnoticed" among the province's Sunni
sheiks.‘They talked about it all the
time.’

… perhaps the
most plausible reason is that there are many fewer Iraqis to kill in the places
where the worst violence occurred, because so many of them have abandoned their
homes or left the country altogether. The
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that roughly 5 million
Iraqis have fled, with nearly half of them now living in Syria, Jordan or other
neighboring states. Others belong to the
cohort known as the "internally displaced," who have sought refuge
from the militias "cleansing" Baghdad in either
the northern or southern provinces. When
there isn't anybody left to kill, the murder statistics tend to improve.”(Go to http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/07/25/mccain_and_iraq/
.)

In his
interview with Katie Couric, McCain said, "Colonel MacFarland was
contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks," said the Senator."Because of the surge we were able to go
out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening."

The
Arizona
Republican's campaign went further the next day, claiming that the major
figures that turned around Anbar province would have been killed had the surge policy
not been in place."If
Barack Obama had had his way, the Sheiks who started the Awakening would have
been murdered at the hands of al Qaeda," said spokesman Tucker Bounds.

McCain’s “Surge is Working” strategy
nonetheless is probably a huge success in winning the hearts and minds – well,
at least the hearts – of stupid voters.The
timid Mainstream Media does little to correct the impression.Facts mean little, and many, if not most
voters will not know the history of the surge, the “Anbar Awakening” and the
fact that the completion of “ethnic cleansing” which has left many persons as
refugees in their own country, has led to a lessening of violence because it has
left fewer persons to kill and persecute as neighborhoods in Iraq become
increasingly homogenous and segregated.

It also does not matter that McCain
claimed that it was “The Surge” that protected
the founder of the Anbar Awakening” when in fact Sheikh
Sattar, the founder and leader of the
tribes that initiated the movement was
assassinated in September 2007, at the height of “The Surge.”

And, oh yeah: what was the actual purpose of “The
Surge”?

From Wikipedia: According
to the "Fact Sheet: The New Way Forward in Iraq " issued by the White House, "the
President's New Iraq Strategy Is Rooted In Six Fundamental Elements" as
follow:

Which of the above items has “The Surge” been
instrumental in accomplishing?Element 1
is doubtful though not ridiculous.Iraqi
troops are still not as independent as needed.Element 2 has certainly not been accomplished – ethnic cleansing has
been carried out.Item 3 was probably accomplished
via the “Anbar Awakening” and the threat of US troops leaving and not via “The Surge”.Items 4, 5 & 6 are probably the most
doubtful of all the elements.“The
Surge” is no slam-dunk, though it seems to have done no harm in Iraq and may have indeed succeeded, in a sense, in closing
the barn door after all the horses ran out.But “The Surge” almost inarguably has harmedUS interest overall by depriving the US of the ability to divert more effort to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Al Qaeda and the Taliban actually exist and
threaten us and the US-backed government of Afghanistan.

Part B:Barack Obama: “I
had no doubt… we would see an improvement”: An appeal to ignorance is not
confined to one political party however.In January 2007, candidate Barack Obama said, "We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively
become a civil war. And until we
acknowledge that reality -- we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops,
30,000 more troops, I don't know any
expert on the region or any military officer that I've spoken to privately that
believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation
on the ground."(CBS' "Face The Nation," 1/14/07.)

The above quote may have indeed been true and sensible
at the time it was originally made.However, it is fair to say that it is possible that “The Surge” has indeed made a “substantial difference
on the ground” even if, in the long run, this difference is irrelevant because
of political failures of the Iraqi government or if, taken as a whole, US
interests were harmed.However, it would be an appeal to ignorance to say “Now,
I had no doubt, and I said at the time when I opposed the surge, that given
how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there,
then we would see an improvement in the
security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence."(Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat Presidential Candidate
Debate, Manchester, NH, 1/5/08)(Go to http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=15779
.)

The above contradictory statements rely on ignorance
and yet are easily discovered – if one wants to make the effort to find the
facts.

The facts do not matter, however, to Stupid Voters and
certainly a Stupid Voter is stupid precisely because they won’t make the effort
to find anything out. In the battle of “The Surge is Working” vs. “I had no doubt… we would see an
improvement” we most likely have a HUGE advantage to McCain in the race for
the Stupid Vote.

The Reasoning Voter (and Reasoning News Media member)
should not be swayed either way; instead the Reasoning Person might ask, “Why did we need a surge, whether it would
work or not, in the first place?Who or
what line of thinking put us in this position in the first place?Are we better off overall with this war, or
would we have been better off with a continuation of the UN weapons inspections
and where did the candidates stand on that when that all important decision had
to be made?

When was the last time you heard that series of
questions asked of the candidates by the Mainstream Media?

Answer: Stupid Voters probably don’t care, but one
could certainly wish that the Mainstream Media were up to the challenge so that
we could give the opportunity to Stupid Voters to prove that they’re not so
stupid.